“Elephant Jana we want you kill, eh?  Just as he look this minute.”

“Yes,” I said, “very much indeed, only how will you show it me?”

“That quite easy, Macumazana.  You just smoke little Kendah ’bacco and see many things, if you have gift, as I think you got, and as I almost sure that lady got,” and he pointed to Miss Holmes.  “Sometimes they things people want see, and sometimes they things people not want see.”

“Dakka,” I said contemptuously, alluding to the Indian hemp on which natives make themselves drunk throughout great districts of Africa.

“Oh! no, not dakka, that common stuff; this ’bacco much better than dakka, only grow in Kendah-land.  You think all nonsense?  Well, you see.  Give me match please.”

Then while we watched he placed some tobacco, at least it looked like tobacco, in a little wooden bowl that he also produced from his basket.  Next he said something to his companion, Marut, who drew a flute from his robe made out of a thick reed, and began to play on it a wild and melancholy music, the sound of which seemed to affect my backbone as standing on a great height often does.  Presently too Harut broke into a low song whereof I could not understand a word, that rose and fell with the music of the flute.  Now he struck a match, which seemed incongruous in the midst of this semi-magical ceremony, and taking a pinch of the tobacco, lit it and dropped it among the rest.  A pale, blue smoke arose from the bowl and with it a very sweet odour not unlike that of the tuberoses gardeners grow in hot-houses, but more searching.

“Now you breath smoke, Macumazana,” he said, “and tell us what you see.  Oh! no fear, that not hurt you.  Just like cigarette.  Look,” and he inhaled some of the vapour and blew it out through his nostrils, after which his face seemed to change to me, though what the change was I could not define.

I hesitated till Scroope said: 

“Come, Allan, don’t shirk this Central African adventure.  I’ll try if you like.”

“No,” said Harut brusquely, “you no good.”

Then curiosity and perhaps the fear of being laughed at overcame me.  I took the bowl and held it under my nose, while Harut threw over my head the antimacassar which he had used in the mango trick, to keep in the fumes I suppose.

At first these fumes were unpleasant, but just as I was about to drop the bowl they seemed to become agreeable and to penetrate to the inmost recesses of my being.  The general affect of them was not unlike that of the laughing gas which dentists give, with this difference, that whereas the gas produces insensibility, these fumes seemed to set the mind on fire and to burn away all limitations of time and distance.  Things shifted before me.  It was as though I were no longer in that room but travelling with inconceivable rapidity.